yes, everyone should get the hpv vaccine. its the leading cause of cervical cancer. i when i say everyone i mean men as well. men are carriers of the hpv virus and can give it to women. it is a 3 shot deal and 100 dollars per shot, but it is well worth it if you are sexually active with multiple partners. 99.7% of people that get HPV develop cervical cancer.

I am all for the HPV vaccine, but I don't know if it should be mandatory. It's pretty expensive for some people, and does insurance even cover it?? I do think those who are against it for the reason that it promotes promiscuity are a little extremist in their views. I am all for supporting women getting this vaccine...

You'd hope insurance would cover it. It's good math for them to prevent all that disease.

Summary:

1) Cervical cancer in Illinois is responsible for only about 200 annual deaths and rates have steadily declined. Nearly all cancers are preventable with a simple Pap test at a fraction of the cost of the vaccine.

2) The HPV vaccine is a unique type of vaccine with no prior clinical experience. The potential for benefit is not nearly as great as the potential for widespread harm if mandated for thousands of children.

3) Merck has funded most HPV vaccine clinical trials and the majority authorship of published papers suggests considerable potential for extensive reporting bias. Over 40% of study co-authors are Merck employees and 81% had received money from Merck.

4) Since cancer requires years to develop the effectiveness if the vaccine is totally hypothetical. Even a Merck executive has recently admitted that vaccine efficacy in women under 15 years is unknown.

5) The HPV vaccine suffers a significant adverse reaction rate (90%) as reported in published trials and also in VAERS. There are no long-term safety studies yet over 500 reports of vaccine failures or adverse reactions have already been reported to the FDA. Gardasil contains a large quantity of a neurotoxin, aluminum at doses that are known to cause neurological damage in animals.

6) Targeting 11 year-old girls is unadvisable, since few studies have assessed children this young. Over one-third of all adverse Gardasil vaccine reactions recently reported to VAERS were in children 16 years old or younger.

7) Since influenza kills ten-times as many individuals as cervical cancer yet flu vaccination is not mandated, HPV mandates can’t be just about “saving more lives”.

Even the CDC has recently stated that HPV vaccine should NOT be mandated.

http://www.vaproject.org/ayoub/what-is-wrong-with-hpv-20070305.htm

we give ENOUGH vaccinations! i think the HPV vaccine is a good idea and people who are having unprotected sex should get a vaccine... but for people who are safe, the HPV vaccine is just another chemical we are putting in our bodies, which isn't necessary.

Damn lickety split you have certainly done your research. You convinced me!

HPV is a virus and as we know, viruses mutate. By making it mandatory, we are only increasing the risk of a more deadly and vicious strain. Let's use vaccinations more judiciously instead of shooting up every little girl. Really, that line of thinking puts us all in much more danger.

I doubt that it will make teens more promiscuous... if anything, having to get a shot will make them more aware that they can contract other viruses and infections through sexual intercourse. I think that vaccine should be highly suggested, but not mandatory. And I believe the vaccine should be free to all who wish. People do need to be educated about his virus, though. I know several people who have it and with awareness of the virus it could have been prevented.

All that being said, the way this vaccine is pushed constantly on advertisements is ridiculous and obscene.

Other reasons not to support mandatory HPV vaccine:

1. The vaccine is only effective for five years.
2. The vaccine only protects against 70% of the HPV strains that cause cervical cancer. Which means that if you don't want to die from cervical cancer, you still need regular pap smears. Also, most women that die from cervical cancer do not have regular pap smears.
3. Cervical cancer only kills 10,000 women in the US per year (compare to 200,000 yearly breast cancer deaths). If vaccines are made mandatory, the government must pick up the tab for the poor. Is it worth the cost? How many homeless people could we feed and clothe for the same amount?

a gentle rain; my oldest child was severely damaged by vaccines. don't even get me started on this topic. merck is sort of like satan is to other people; unfricking believable at best and evil at worst.

5.5 million new cases of HPV per year and only 12,200 cases of cervical cancer - doing the math - that is a very low number.

I think that people need to be educated on HPV. I mean really I never even knew what HPV was growing up. Luckily kids will know what it is now thanks to ... Oneless, oneless, I wanna be oneless - O-N-E-L-E-S-S..

I'm not pro mandatory, but I do see some interesting arguments here I'd like to learn more about.

Qwerty, where did you get your info for your first point? If the vaccine is truly only effective for 5 years, I imagine we'd get booster shots every so often. I'm curious as to those stats. I didn't think they knew exactly how long yet.

Re: Qwery's second point, I don't think they intend to replace the pap smear. Has anyone said that?? You are correct that there are other causes besides this virus. I don't know of anyone who has said this prevents 100% of cervical cancer. Disregarding the rest of the arguments regarding efficacy, it seems if you could prevent 70% of a disease it might be worth it. So I'm not sure this point is relevant, except in that you basically say that people don't get pap smears for a variety of reasons, and it's usually they who die, so the vaccine would in fact be most effective for that group.

As for the third point, I don't know the numbers, but I'm sure insurance/gov't pays lots for those 10,000 who die of cervical cancer each year. I'm sure they pay a lot for the people for the rest of the thousands who contract it and then _survive_. Death rates are only part of the equation. Maybe the total cost of all the chemo, radiation, hospitals, etc. makes it worth it for them to pony the cost for the vaccine? Like I said, I'm not sure what the numbers are, but preventative care can be hugely beneficial in the long run.

Lickety, am I reading right that 10 times more people die of influenza in the US? Based on these other stats, that means 100,000 die of the flu? That seems shocking to me. Maybe the flu stats are for the world? That would make more sense. Also, the CDC lumps flu and pnemonia stats together so that may have been the reason for those inflated numbers.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
for the most recent year available; 2004

Number of deaths: 2,398,343

Death rate: 816.7 deaths per 100,000 population

Life expectancy: 77.9 years

Number of deaths for leading causes of death:

Heart disease: 654,092

Cancer: 550,270

Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 150,147

Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 123,884

Accidents (unintentional injuries): 108,694

Diabetes: 72,815

Alzheimer's disease: 65,829

Influenza/Pneumonia: 61,472

Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 42,762

Septicemia: 33,464

my post was flagged (???). basically of the 2.4 million deaths in the us in 2004 (most recent year for which data is available), 61k were from influenza.

I don't know what flagged means? The data I found on influenza suggests that over 95% of the deaths are actually pnemonia. Just thought that was interesting.

Meanwhile, according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), "influenza and pneumonia" took 62,034 lives in 2001 — 61,777 of which were attributed to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was flu virus positively identified. Between 1979 and 2002, NCHS data show an average 1348 flu deaths per year (range 257 to 3006).

The reason many epidemic strains are becoming resistant is because people don't always vaccinate their children.
Soemtimes people can have adverse reactions, ad can getting the diseases themselves (more so than anything a vaccine can cause). Most vaccines are inactivated vaccines nowadays, often conjugate or produced in recombinant forms. I am under the understanding that the HPV vaccine is an inactivated form not the attenuated type.
As a whole, the benefits of vaccination greatly outweigh the risks. Anyone who has has any microbiology exposure can understand this point. This is why we are getting outbreaks of old diseases because people are missing vaccinations. That is the primary source of resistance next to antibiotics. This isn't their fault though, they just simply do not know the importance and science behind them.
Medical personnal today are slacking in their education of vaccines, that is pretty obvious.
I am sorry, when we get on medical subjects here, being in the medical and research field myself, I get pretty heated when things are not portrayed accurately or misinformation is spread.

Pop goes the world:

Oops, I was wrong. Only 3,000 women die of cervical cancer each year. Ten-thousand women are diagonosed each year. That is 10,000 out of 150,000,000 women in the US. So one woman in every 15,000 is diagnosed each year. Doesn't it make more sense to just provide free condoms to the entire population? I don't think the average woman would use $360 worth of condoms in five years. Plus, condoms prevent lots of other diseases (with failure rates better that the 30% failure rate of the HPV vaccine).

Yes, the vaccine only works for five years:
Check out question 8 of
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vaccine/hpv/hpv-faqs.htm

Also, I never claimed that Merck intends to replace the pap smear. Merck intends to make alot of money. My point is that even vaccinated women will have to have regular pap smears if they don't want to die of cervical cancer.

Ok well then that confirms it. Thanks! If it only lasts 5 years, it is an inactivated form.
Inactivated vaccines are much safer and cannot revert to their pathogenic form. Most if conjugated or produced in other cells do not even have side effects.
More the reason to make this mandatory with the other vaccinations.
I think we should all be thankful to Merck and others that this research has been done. It will save many lives. Even if people will get money, it is still good and very helpful research.

The argument that the vaccine will cause young people to have sex is ridiculous. There are a host of many other diseases that can be transmitted via sexual contact besides HPV. This is just an excuse. Parents need to educate their children and stop placing blame elsewhere. If children are educated about safe sex, they will know that there are many complications that sex can bring, HPV being only a piece of it.
People have to be front-line parents and not assume the responsibility of this to be placed elsewhere.

if they are so safe then perhaps you and your daughters would like to be the subjects of this little experiment. i will not poison my children any further to keep up the herd mentality. where do you get off saying that "most.... do not even have side effects"? and thankful to merck? what the f*ck for?

Oh yes! Thank you Merck! Your vaccine will save .0000007% of our population each year (yes, that number is correct 70% of the 3000 women that die each year divided by the US population)! Thank you! And it only costs us what- $360 per young woman! There are 36 million women under the age of 18 in the US. So that is 36 million x 360 = 13 billion dollars. What a bargain!

ash-marisa: Your last post is a strawman argument if I have ever seen one. No one on this board is arguing that being vaccinated promotes promiscuity.

i think that it's encouraging promiscuity because now girls know that they won't get HPV.

cervical cancer may not KILL that many people, but I have THREE friends all under the age of 25 that are infertile due to cervical cancer treatments and surgeries. Look up those stats, then think about how beneficial it is... these are white collar, blue blood young ladies, not very promiscious... one has only had THREE partners EVER..

this disease is caught so easily, and so undetectable that it is spread even easier. I WAS educated about this disease extensively in high school, and get yearly pap smears, and before I will sleep with anyone, I require they get tested... and I will still get this vaccine, and I am in a monogamous relationship. It is something that I am THAT concerned about after watching my friends go through what they have, and I had to have a biopsy done last year to check for CC. Talk about PAIN... NO THANKS! I will avoid that again at ALL COSTS... I seriously almost assaulted my doctor!!!!

Point being, prevention is key, but I consider this a really good method of preventing. I am with lickedy split... I don't agree with vaccinating eleven year olds, but until I turn 25, I am required by my state to be tested for all STD's every OB exam, I see this as something that should be covered by insurance and highly recommended for those that are sexually active, which would typically be 16+ anyway....

It does not encourage promiscious behavior... seriously, if that were true, then everyone would use condoms EVERY TIME because then they would KNOW they wouldn't get pregnant... and does that change the unwanted pregnancies? No, because people don't think about their actions and the consequences. If people are going to have sex, they will have sex, whether they have protection in the form of a vaccine, a condom, a dental dam, spermicide, birth control, etc. These arguments have been going on forever, and truth be told, most people don't care or even know about HPV in the first place. When people are horny, they have sex, no matter how stupid it may seem later on. And just because they are protected from HPV doesn't mean they are protected from AIDS, HIV, herpes, or from getting pregnant. There are TONS of risk factors that you have to worry about, this is merely ONE among MANY.

i'm not a medical person at all. i majored in psych., so i'm definitely not as qualified as a medical student to make an opinion on this. but i THINK that more lives are saved by vaccinations than are hurt by them. i would rather my kid get a little sick from a vaccination than KILLED by smallpox or cancer. i would rather get a little sick than die. i would even take a little bit of neurological damage over dying. kay? thanks.

i was required to have the hep B vaccine before i went to college. a three part vaccine, too, and it hurt like no other. i got it when i was 15, recommended by the doctor. i DID NOT engage in unprotected sex because of it. i don't know anybody who does engage in sex more because of it. they didn't even tell me when i got the shot that hep B is a sexually transmitted disease.

and for all those who think, "wow, this is a big cost for so few lives saved. not worth it!" how much is a loved one's life worth to you? i hope that, despite the pitfalls of this vaccine (such as not covering all strains of hpv for marketing reasons), it becomes as necessary and normal as a tetanus shot. sure, i have to get it again every few years, but, dangit, i don't want lockjaw.

well katie225, when you have a child you can bless yourself with your own words. let those more "qualified" make the medical decisions for you and your family. you're certainly off to a great start by allowing yourself to be vaccinated without even bothering to find out what it's for. and if something happens to your baby as a result of your blind faith in others remember "a little bit of neurological damage" is nothing, "kay"?

Qwert..what are you talking about? I never said people here were saying that it would encourage girls to be more promiscuous. I said that a lot of people in society today that are against the vaccine are using this argument, and it is a very bad argument. I have NO idea where you thought I was I was implying that that was being argued here or by you.

I am sorry for those whose children have been hurt by vaccines, but you have to understand this is the minority. Much much much more people are helped than hurt by vaccines yearly.

How can one even remotely argue that we should not be thankful for this vaccine? Why should one appeal to people for the that were harmed by vaccine and then smite those that have been harmed by HPV or other diseases that could have been prevented? Think of all the women who have been impacted by HPV. Are they not worthy to have been helped? It doesn't matter if the "percentage is small". It still far outweighs the people that have negative reactions. If someone you guys knew had HPV and was hurt by it, you would be thrilled for this vaccine. That is an absolutely naive and ridicilous argument.
This vaccine is medically important. Yes money is made. That is the case anywhere. There are millions of drugs and vaccines out there that prevent dieases that only a small part encounter. Should we do away with them too?

One can get a lot more diseases if there were no vaccines than by taking the vaccines themselves. That should be an obvious point. In college many of use say a few number die from meningitis. Think of how many meningitis vaccines are given out annually in colleges. That number could be much higher. If not for the vaccine, whole dormitories could be dead today. And that vaccine is not mandatory.
It is all one in the same.
This can be researched, but it is well known that the only reason diseases such as whooping cough and diptheria still exist today and spreads somewhat is due primarily to unvaccinated children attending day care centers. The disease has fresh unvaccinated hosts and can now act and develop new qualities that can decrease the effectiveness of treatment. I would never put my child at risk for such diseases, and would pray that others have been vaccinated so that they would not put my child at risk either.

And most inactivated vaccines do not have major side effects. That is why inactivated vaccines are sometimes preferred over attenuated vaccines, because attenuated vaccines can cause side effects and reversion in compromised people.

And this is not an "experiment" That phase already occurred years ago.

I'm not saying that women with cervical cancer don't matter. 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty worldwide (which means they live on less than one dollar per day). These people are at risk for starvation plus hundreds (thousands?) of diseases that white collar women in this country will never have to worry about.

The billions spent to save a few thousand women in this county from cervical cancer could save millions if it were used to ameliorate poverty.

Qwerty, thank you for the link to the article. I had thought you meant that it only lasted a maximum of 5 years and could not be extended with boosters.

As to your other comment about handing out free condoms to every woman to prevent this, I think it's pretty clear that despite knowing that condoms protect against a lot of disease and unwanted pregancy, people are having unprotected sex. And LOTS of it.

If we found a vaccine to prevent HIV would you just tell everyone forget it, use condoms? Granted an HIV vaccine is on a different level than this, but the argument holds the same. If condoms could have solved it, it would have right?

It's really a tragedy when vaccines end up hurting a child. And it's hard to reduce this kind of pain to a math equation. But truly, some of these vaccines have changed the world of medicine such that many fewer people die. I'm not saying that this one in particular will be of a magnitude, but others certainly have helped save millions of lives over the years.

Lickety, it seems like your situation has not been addressed sufficiently. You said that you have a child who has been severely damaged by vaccines. If you want, can you tell us what vaccine it was? Did your other children get vaccinated? I think your experience is important to tell because it does show another side to having children vaccinated. Thanks!

And relating to all the posts above, i have a lot of thinking to do about the HPV vaccine. i was all for it before since i am a cancer survivor and had my own scare with cervical cancer, but now i am not so sure anymore. Why can't pap smears be the tool we use the most? I'm conflicted since i really don't want to deny anyone the possibility of not getting cancer with just a few shots, know what i mean? Treatment is really hard to go through and very emotionally scarring. if you don't need to go through that and get some shots to take care of it long before, then why not?

See why i'm conflicted???

ash_marisa, the reason that Gardasil has been said to be effective for five years is bc it has only been studied for five years and known to be effective for those five years. That being said, do you really want to expose your child to a vaccine that has been studied for only 5 years.
Furthermore, I think these given age ranges are ridiculus. You can not claim that the hpv vaccine is in any way effective when it is being administered to patients who have already engaged in sexual contact (which is very likely prior to 25, prior to 18....heck even prior to 16.)

Nica, exactly Pap smears are the answer. More education, public awareness etc is what is needed. Cervical cancer used to be the biggest killer of women, until the pap smear came along. Cervical cancer and the precancerous stages are easily detectable and treatable.

Even if you never have sex before marriage, but your husband does, he could pass it to you unless you use condoms and I don't know very many married couples who use condoms still. (It's all about the pill.) That's just what I've read.

Really, I wish the dang thing weren't so expensive or I would have gotten it by now. My gyno is charging $500 and my insurance won't pay for it right away. I have to pay for it and then my insurance will reimburse me after I file a claim. Where am I going to get $500??

Just got mine last week Dear, man did my left arm hurt.

While no one on this board has argued that this vaccine will cause girls to be more promiscuous (although the topic has been addressed), the hardcore Christian groups are arguing just that thing.

I don't think this would make girls be promiscuous. I mean, there are a slew of other diseases out there people can get.
Crazy.

I am not sure on this subject, ultimately i think it is a personal choice.

Would want more research done on it first..

Sorry to tell you all this but condoms DO NOT prevent against HPV. They help but they are not 100% effective because there is still skin to skin contact during sex even while wearing condoms. And because HPV is hard to test for in men and often they do not exhibit symptoms. This means that even if your teenage daughter chooses to remain a virgin until marriage she can still contract HPV from her husband!

Hear hear, cemp1979! Thanks for backing up my previous claim. I knew I had read that somewhere!

well, lickety, i'd rather my baby get a little hurt by a vaccine then DIE from something completely preventable. i would feel about a billion times worse if my child died from something like whooping cough or measles or mumps or rubella than if they got hurt by a vaccine. because at least i know that i was doing what's best for my child according to the genius that is modern medicine. not vaccinating because you're afraid of getting sick or hurt by a vaccine is like not going outside because you're afraid of getting hit by a meteor.

and as for not knowing what i was getting vaccinated for, i was only 15! they told me what it was, hep B, i'd heard of it. i just had no idea it was even sexually transmitted. it's not like when i got my tetanus shot i had any idea it was to prevent bad things from happening to me when i stepped on a rusty nail. to put someone down for not knowing every single thing that goes into them when they were a kid is pretty mean. i'm positively sure my mother knew, though.

i'm sorry i've put my blind faith into the medical field. i'm sorry that i trust an institution which has saved people from death from things that used to kill thousands. a little skepticism never hurt anyone, that's for sure and i'm the first one to be skeptical of everything. i think asking about what sorts of trials are going on for a vaccine and who's sponsoring those trials are excellent questions to be asking. but you can't wear a tinfoil hat every single day of your life.

Piece of mind is why I think ppl should get it. Maybe based on what everyone has said above, we should do the proper research and make the decision personally, but as someone who contracted this (one of the cancer causing strands) as a VIRGIN and now is having to get tested every three months, I wish this came along sooner. My imagination just runs too wild whenever there's a health issue "down there." And please don't judge now that Ive admitted that.

I don't think it should be mandatory. I don't think it 'gives permission' for young girls to be promiscuous. The old 'no condoms in school' argument rears it's ignorant head again, I see. And yes, I am a Christian and encourage abstinence/celibacy but let's be real... kids are bombarded with sexual images and pressure so let's arm them with information and protection, if need be.

What I don't like about this 'vaccine' is that Merck, a major pharmaceutical company is the driving force behind this, not independent scientists and labs. Where is the American Medical Association's findings on this? What universities and medical schools have looked at the research? Where are the outside studies?

The way the FDA works nowadays, they just take the word of the drug companies (who's bottom line is profits, not health) look at their research (which can be fabricated) and put it on the market. They are supposed to do their own testing, but 9 times out of 10 they don't.

It's too new, too untested, and the parties involved are too corrupted and colluded for my taste. And science is not an exact science. Results can be skewed and data rearranged to produce a favorable outcome. Trust, I've seen it done numerous times.

If I had a daughter, I would not want her to get the 'vaccine' because not only are the chances of her getting cervical cancer very slim, you can still get cervical cancer regardless of your sexual history or exposure to the virus.

Bet, 10 years from now we'll be hearing of 20-30 year olds who are in dire medical straits because of the adverse effects of this 'vaccine'.

-the ceeg

-the ceeg

cgmaetc
There actually are LOTS of studies done outside of Merck. Please reference the CDC, NIH, American Cancer Society, etc. for their take on this vaccine.